Please join the Farmington Land Trust as we host a panel discussion on the effects of light pollution on our environment and human health. FLT Board Member, Jessica Harrison will moderate an expert panel of speakers from Lights out Connecticut and The Farmington Town Council. We will explore the impact of light pollution on  birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, plants, and humans. Together, we can find solutions!

Panelists:

Meredith Barges is a bird-friendly building policy advocate, educator, Co-Chair of Lights Out Connecticut, and a former Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative policy researcher. Through her work, she helps people understand and appreciate birds' complex lives, how birds interact with the built environment, and how our decisions about buildings, lighting, and landscaping affect bird populations, with existential stakes. She co-authored “Building Safer Cities for Birds: How Cities Are Leading the Way on Bird-Friendly Building Policy” (American Bird Conservancy & Yale Law School, 2023). In 2021, she helped to convince Yale Divinity School to join Lights Out. She holds an MA in critical theory from the University of Chicago and an MDiv in religion & ecology from Yale University.

Craig Repasz is Co-Chair of Lights Out Connecticut, President of the Friends of Stewart B McKinney NWR, an organization that supports this important refuge. He was president of the New Haven Bird Club and the conservation chair of the Connecticut Ornithological Association. He has been the volunteer coordinator for the Connecticut Bird Atlas for six years. He enjoys backpacking and conducts Mountain Birdwatch surveys for the Vermont Center of Ecostudies, focusing on the Bicknell’s Thrush and other high-elevation species. Patti Boye-Williams is on the Farmington Town Council, the Farmington Land Trust Board, and the Farmington Green Efforts Committee. She is a Law partner in the Environmental and Energy practices at Murtha Cullina. Patti is a former Assistant Attorney General at the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General. As an Assistant Attorney General, she advised and represented the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Department of Agriculture, and the Connecticut Agricultural and Experiment Station. Leo Smith is the Northeast Regional Director and Connecticut Chapter Chair of DarkSky. He works strategically to protect the night across the United States by integrating Dark Sky lighting principles into national building codes. He developed language used to amend the CT State Building Code to cover parking lot lighting and introduced two code change proposals to NY State Energy Code in 2019. He was a member of the DarkSky International board of directors (2004-2016) and voting member of the Illuminating Engineering Society’s Roadway Lighting Committee (2006-2019), serving on its Standard Practice and Residential Street Lighting subcommittees. He is a long-time resident of Suffield, CT.